ir) FACTORY LEGISLATION.

299

Pendent action of the workmen themselves, and not by
Wervention of the law.’
Singularly enough, while he thus trusted to the independence
 of the workmen, he objected to workmen’s combi-Uationg,
 « Depend upon it,” he said to his brother,
‘ Dothing can be got by fraternizing with trades unions.
They are founded upon principles of bratal tyranny and
Monopoly, I would rather live under a Dey of Algiers than
% Trades Committee.”® Yet without combination it is difficult
 to gee how, on the great scale of modern industries, the
Workmen can exert any effective influence on the regulation
of their labour. That in the first forms of combination
there was both brutality and tyranny, is quite true. That
these vices have almost disappeared is due in no small degree
to an active fraternization, to use Cobden’s own word, with
the leaders of the workmen by members of the middle class,
“ho represented the best moral and social elements in the
Public opinion of their time.
The protection of the labouring population had in various
forms engaged the serious attention of Parliament for several
Years. So far back as 1802 there was a Factory Act, which
Was Sanitary in its main intention, but also contained clauses
regulating hours, Others followed in 1819 and 1825, and
® very important factory law, containing the earliest pro-Visions
 for education, was passed in 1833, by which time the
Vorkmen were partially able to make themselves heard in
Parliament, In 1842 Lord Ashley had procured the passing
of the Mines and Collieries Act, a truly admirable and benefons
 piece of legislation, excluding women from labour un-Jergroung,
 and rescuing children from conditions hardly less
Borriplg than those of negro slavery. In 1843, still under
the impulse of Lord Ashley, Sir James Graham brought

See Appendix A, at the end of the volume.
2 Ts F. W. Cobden, Angust 16, 1842,

f

1844.
Zr. 40.